Spend smart: 8 Steps to a budget that sticks

Nov 1, 2015

Rate this article and enter to winWhere does the money go? What happens to the missing socks? To one of these questions, you can finally get the answer. The college years are typically our first experience of managing adult finances—and while that responsibility can be empowering, it calls for conscious planning. Our spending habits have consequences that go beyond our immediate financial dilemmas (“Can I afford to go out tonight?”) and reverberate through our futures. In a recent Student Health 101 survey, 91 percent of student respondents thought keeping a budget would help them better manage their money. These eight steps will get you to a spending plan that will keep you solvent through college and life. (Those missing socks remain beyond the scope of SH101. Try a theoretical physicist?)

1. What is your actual current spending?

“The most important step is to understand where your money really is going. If you can’t get a handle on your spending, it will be difficult to take control and make changes.” —LP

Figure out your average monthly spending

1. Work through your financial statements for at least two recent, typical months. Categorize all your costs. You will probably want to include these categories and maybe others:

Education

School supplies

Groceries

Dining out

Entertainment/bars

General health & fitness

Uninsured health care

Housing

Utilities/cable/internet

Cell phone

Insurance

Transport

Gas

Auto lease/loan

Shopping/clothing

Gifts

2. Add your costs in each category. Try Mint.com or a similar program.

Consider rounding up the numbers: It’s safer to overestimate than underestimate your spending.

Divide your total costs by the number of months you’ve analyzed to get your regular average monthly spending.

4. What do you need? What do you want?

“Now that you have a handle on your cash inflows and outflows, it’s time to prioritize how you spend your money. The key is to be realistic about what you need versus what you want. The greatest value in making a budget is seeing where your actual dollars have gone. Then we realize how much of our spending is discretionary.” —LP

Identify your needs, wants, and spending limit

Identify your needs. These are costs that must be met no matter what, such as tuition, housing, groceries, health care, and transport to work or school. Calculate the average cost of your monthly needs.

Then identify your wants: those discretionary costs. Be realistic. Account for pizza nights, movies, shoes, and Netflix. (Note: You’re not making decisions yet. You’re tracking previous decisions.) Calculate the average cost of your current monthly wants.

Anticipate temptations and how you’ll handle them. Any successful behavior change involves planning; consider phasing in these changes over several months. To judge whether or not your plan is realistic, think about what a cut would mean. For example:

Go out once a week instead of twice

Repair shoes instead of replacing them

Pack lunch

Find free entertainment on weekends

5. What’s your new weekly allowance?

“Convenience has a cost. Eating out is more expensive than making your own meals, and buying coffee is more expensive than brewing your own. This is where you have the ability to really affect your budget.” —BA

Manage your everyday spending

Divide your new spending limit by 4.5. This number is your weekly allowance.

Consider withdrawing your weekly allowance amount from your bank at the beginning of the week. Once it’s gone…it’s gone. Going cash-only makes it easier to track and adjust your spending.

Think about cash flow. Your income likely isn’t consistent each month. You need money in your account when the bills are due, even though your sources of income are less regular. Some funds, like student loans, are a one-time or two-time disbursement. You may get a large check beyond what you need that month; make sure that money is saved to meet each future month’s expenses.

6. What’s your savings account situation?

As a student, you’re not expected to save money for retirement. But you do need to manage your cash flow and prepare for those irregular or infrequent bills.

Use your savings account to manage your spending

When you receive a large payment, like the portion of a student loan intended for living expenses (a “refund check”), deposit it into your savings account.

Refer back to your occasional average monthly spending—your anticipated irregular expenses (step 1). Also consider any goals (step 2) that require you to save. You will need to hold some funds and make monthly transfers to your checking account to cover your budgeted monthly expenses or for budgeted occasional expenses as they occur.

7. What’s your checking account situation?

Figure out how much money to transfer to your checking account each month to cover your expenses. Refer back to your regular average monthly spending (step 1), adjusted to take account of your new monthly wants spending limit (step 4).

Each month, automatically transfer the appropriate amount to your checking account. This way, your lump sums function like a regular paycheck, so you won’t spend money that you’ll need for future expenses.

Depending on your income sources and how often your money comes in, you will need to adjust the amount you’re transferring. The amount of money available to you for regular spending each month should be reasonably consistent.

8. What’s the easiest way to monitor your progress?

“Every time your wallet comes out, ask yourself, ‘Do I need to spend this money? Between your graduation and your retirement, if you save $10 a day, and invest it in the stock market, when you retire you will likely have $1 million from those savings alone.” —LP

Keep track of what you spend. You can do this in a notebook, on your phone, or with an app like Mint. Tally or check your spending and account balances regularly: at the end of each day, twice a week, or once a week.

Mint.com: Your most popular tool for planning your spending

Mint.com is the digital program most frequently recommended by students in a recent Student Health 101 survey. It’s a free online tool and app that connects securely to your banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions, pulls the relevant info, and organizes it for you in one place.

Mint.com makes it easy to track your spending and create a realistic, adaptable budget. It sorts your expenses into categories, which you can customize. You’ll need to check and adjust the categorization, especially in the early days. Mint.com can learn your habits over time.

“Credit cards are too convenient. We tend to forget we need to pay the money back at the end of the month, which exposes us to steeply increasing interest payments. I have customers who are thousands of dollars in debt because a credit card doesn’t feel like real money.” —LP

Use the credit card for a regular expense—e.g., groceries—and otherwise leave it at home

Pay it off in full every month

Your top 10 strategies for a shatterproof budget

In our student survey, two budget tips were the runaway winners:

Being aware of my bank balance

Realistically anticipating (or overestimating) my expenses

Your top 10 strategies also included:

Tracking my expenses

Taking advantage of student discounts

Sticking to my shopping list

Avoiding places and activities that involve costs

Having an emergency fund

Using a digital budgeting or finances tool

Using cash, not cards

Paying down my debt

Student Health 101 survey. 1,130 students answered this question

Your favorite online money tools and apps

“I would highly recommend Mint.com. It is really simple to use and all your transactions go in automatically. It really makes it simple to see where your money is going.”—Zach D., Michigan Technological University

“The AllBudget2 app for students details the common expenses that college students are expected to worry about, and has a simple user interface.”—Petah S., Georgia Gwinnett College

“Mint.com, LearnVest.com, and CreditKarma.com are great for tracking your current cash flow, and have well-written articles.”—J. W., Valencia College, Florida

“YNAB [You Need a Budget] costs money but is powerful and teaches good budgeting principles.”—Chris C., University of Rochester, New York

“A regular computer spreadsheet can be helpful. Most programs offer templates to get you started. You also don’t have to be online to access it.” —Elizabeth M., Western Carolina University, North Carolina

“See if your bank or credit union offers an app. It’s the quickest and most direct way to monitor your money.”—Nathan J., University of North Alabama

You must enter your name, email, and phone number so we can contact you if you're the winner of this month's drawing. Your data will never be shared or sold to outside parties. View our Privacy Policy.

I READ THE ARTICLE & LEARNED FROM IT

What was the most interesting thing you read in this article?

If you could change one thing about Student Health 101, what would it be?

HAVE YOU SEEN AT LEAST ONE THING IN THIS ISSUE THAT...

..you will apply to everyday life? YesNo

..caused you to get involved, ask for help, utilize campus resources, or help a friend? YesNo

Lucy Berrington is a health writer, editor, and communications manager. Her work has been published in numerous publications in the US and UK. She has an MS in health communication from Tufts University School of Medicine, Massachusetts, and a BA from the University of Oxford, UK.